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Thursday, October 30, 2014

A man tried to infiltrate a Jewish school in Créteil (Paris). The man climbed the fence and tried to remove the security camera from there. He also photographed the school, held up a sign saying "free Palestine" and called out antisemitic insults.

Max Moses Bonifer, 18, has been acting as a pupil representative for a State school in Offenbach. Max is Jewish and has become used to anti-Semitic insults being leveled at him on a daily basis. He is called "Jude", obviously not in a friendly way, and also advised that there would be a "Jewish action".

Things got worse since the Gaza events. Lately, things escalated and he started getting death threats from Muslim teenagers.

He complained that in the school there is an increasing radicalisation of Muslim youths, Salafist militancy coupled with failed integration policies.

Max Bonifer said that as head boy he had to speak for pupils who threatened to kill him. He just can't do that. He has resigned from his post with effect from December 1.

The banned London School of Economics men's rugby players were today accused of having dressed like Guantanamo Bay detainees in front of Muslim students and breaking a Jewish students' nose during a Nazi-themed drinking game.

The club was disbanded by the students union after leaflets labelling women 'slags', 'trollops' and 'mingers' were dished out at the freshers' fair for the historically liberal university, where past students include John F Kennedy and David Attenborough.

An entire high school class in Germany is being investigated after the teenage pupils allegedly started greeting each other with 'Heil Hitler' and communicating in Nazi slogans.

Parents and authorities are horrified after it emerged that some of the 29 student have been swapping Nazi sayings and slogans throughout the school day on instant messaging-app WhatsApp.

(...)

Eli Gampel, 54, who has a son in the class, said: 'These discussions about the Nazi class from Landsberg are a load of rubbish. I thought it was a bad dream when I opened newspapers and read the article.'

Gampel, the former head of the local Halle Jewish Community, said his son had experienced harassment at the school.

'My son told me that someone had stuck a far-right NPD [National Democratic Party] sticker on his jacket. It was well known, it seems, that he was Jewish.'

'I have made a formal complaint with police for an investigation, but on the other hand it would definitely be the wrong thing to simply accuse the entire class and tar them with the same brush.'

He said: 'Even after I read about it, I found it difficult to get him to talk about what went on. It was only through a lengthy discussion that he admitted what was in the newspaper article was essentially true.'

A Belgian watchdog on anti-Semitism asked the government to block a Kuwaiti preacher who calledfor Jews to be eradicated from attending an Islamic conference in Brussels.

Tarek al-Swaidan, a leader of Kuwait’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, is expected to attend the Muslim Forum of Brussels on Nov. 7, the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism, or LBCA, said in a statement Wednesday.

The group motioned the Belgian Foreign Ministry to block his entrance into the country.

“An open anti-Semite, he declared only last July that the State of Israel must be destroyed along with all the Jews,” the LBCA statement said.

Following a piece on Israel (see below) on the Facebook page of Belgian magazine Knack, known for its anti-Israel editorial line, a reader Johan Vercarre posted a message in Flemish: "Vuule joden!", meaning "Dirty Jews!".

Mr. Vercarre had indicated that he worked for Belgocontrol, "an autonomous public company in charge of the safety of air traffic in the civil airspace for which the Belgian State is responsible". It is partly controlled by the State and its employees shouldn't be allowed to post racial slurs.

Joods Actueel, a Jewish publication based in Antwerp, contacted Belgocontrol. But the comment was not removed. When Joods Actueel asked for an explanation, it was told that appropriate measures had been taken. A further exchange of emails ensued in which Belgocontrol complained that it was being unfairly vilified...

An email was then sent to Mr. Renaud Lorand, Belgocontrol's chairman (with a copy to the Belgian League Against Antisemitism). Mr Lorand reacted immediately and condemned the offending comment unreservedly. The comment was removed yesterday - it had been posted on September 23.

There is a lesson to be learnt. Anti-Semitism in its crudest forms has become acceptable and accepted in Europe.

Vandalism at the Mount of Olives cemetery is a rampant problem. In the past, Jewish visitors have filed hundreds of complaints regarding rock-throwing attacks by Arabs, and vandalism of the graves of loved ones.

"The police and security guards at the cemetery - placed there by the government - do not even deal with the terrorists", said King. "Last night, the holy Saturday night of Parshat Noach, the roads leading to the burial plots looked like the entrance to a refugee camp."

"The terrorists set fire to tires and threw Molotov cocktails at the burial cave of the Admor of Gur. Tall pillars of security cameras were set on fire and uprooted, fences were broken and had been torn out. Gravestones were smashed."

Bradford East MP David Ward has provoked fresh anger after tweeting about “control of MPs” by supporters of Israel.

Nearly two weeks after MPs voted overwhelmingly to urge recognition of a Palestinian state, the Liberal Democrat politician took to Twitter last night to say: “After Commons #Palestine vote what next? Need to expose Pro-#Israel control of MPs against recognition.”

A book for teaching the Norwegian language introduces people from around the world. Most come from existing countries, which are marked on the map: Norway, Poland, Somalia and Australia. But one comes from a country that does not yet exist. In fact, a country that never existed.

What about the country that currently exists in that very same place? We don't know.
\
Because in Norway, even a language course is just wishful thinking.

Thierry Van de Plas, a councillor in Kraainem for the Christian democratic CDH party, was removed from his party and all his official positions after it was revealed that he was a Holocaust negationist.

Vand De Plas wrote on Facebook in September 2013, in a private chat, that based on his own investigation, he agreed with Olivier Mathieu (convicted negationist) and had gotten to the conclusion that the gas chambers were fake.

Vandals stole and vandalized an Israeli flag flying outside a homeless shelter in Eggesin (eastern Germany). The missionaries who run the shelter say the flag was a statement against anti-Semitism, and was also put up for religious reasons.

The flag had been torn down several times. It seems that now somebody drove a car into the flagpole in order to bring it down.

Maximilien Le Roy is the French author of three anti-Israel comic strips "Gaza", "Faire le Mur" and Palestine dans quel Etat?". He was planning to attend a comic strips festival in Jerusalem.

Mr Le Roy arrived at Ben Gurion International Airport on October 13 where he was held for four hours but was denied entry in Israel. He is reported to have been told: "You can badmouth Israel to your heart's content in your country, but not here in Israel".

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Maxence Buttey, 22, offended officials of the anti-immigration party by sending them a video in which he praised the "visionary" virtues of the Koran and urged them to become Muslims.

Mr Buttey, a councillor in the eastern Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Grand, said the Front National and Islam had much in common.

(...)

He said he found it difficult to believe the "official" version of the September 11 attacks, adding that there was doubt about the "Merah affair" -- referring to the al-Qaeda inspired French gunman, Mohammed Merah, who killed seven people in the south of France in 2012.

The candidate selected to stand for the Conservative Party in an upcoming by-election in Kent is an anti-Israel activist at odds with the party’s stance on boycotts.

Kelly Tolhurst won an open primary to fight in Rochester and Strood next month.
A local businesswoman and councillor, Ms Tolhurst is known as a vocal anti-Israel campaigner in the area.

During the Gaza conflict in July and August her Twitter account regularly posted messages calling on supporters to boycott Israeli companies. She also re-posted messages from the "Free Gaza Movement".
She repeatedly targeted companies, including SodaStream and Ahava, and encouraged others to “hold Israel accountable for its violation of international law”.

Lured by local mosques and the Internet, by visions of warriors and victory dancing in their heads, thousands of European Muslims have left the safety of their homes in England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and elsewhere to join the Syrian jihad.

Concern about the security threat they may pose on their return has gripped European leaders for some time; now, they are starting to focus on ways of stopping Muslim would-be jihadists from traveling to Syria at all.
But not everyone seems to think this is such a good idea: Pieter Broertjes, mayor of the Dutch city of Hilversum, for instance, thinks the fighters should be allowed to go.

“They’re adults,” he said in a radio interview on Thursday. “Dutch went to Israel after World War II to fight the British, and we didn’t try to stop them.” (The reference is to the Palestinian territories, which were under British rule until 1948.)

Let’s get this straight. Muslims who seek to join terrorist groups, killing innocent men, women, and children in some of the most gruesome, inhuman acts of violence imaginable, are just like the Jews who escaped Europe after World War II?
What makes Broertjes’ statement particularly shocking is that it comes just two months after a remark by another member of his party, the PvdA, or Labor Party, describing IS on Twitter as a “Zionist plot.”

Nazi war criminal Herberts Cukurs is a national hero in Latvia for standing up to Russian forces. (YouTube screenshot)

Israel’s Foreign Ministry slammed the production in Latvia of a show celebrating the life of Nazi war criminal Herbert Cukurs.

Titled “Cukurs, Herbert Cukurs,” the musical premiered earlier this month. The play is based on the life of the deputy commander of the Arajs Kommando force that participated in the near annihilation of Latvian Jewry after the Nazis invaded Latvia. Israel’s Mossad spy agency reportedly killed Cukurs in South America.
The Latvian government has criticized but not banned the privately produced work.

According to Holocaust survivors’ testimonies, Cukurs personally killed and tortured Jews, [Efraim Zuroff, who heads the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center] added.
Many in the Baltic nations today view Nazi collaborators as national heroes because they fought the Russian army and Moscow’s grip on the region before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The trouble is that many Europeans will see Herpa's apology as evidence of the controlling powers of the "lobby" in silencing all criticism of Israel and consider that Herpa's remarks are totally justified... It is a no win situation, or rather a lose/lose situation.

The German company Herpa, the world’s leading manufacturer of quality model airplanes, has apologized for an article in its monthly magazine, WingsWorld, which included hostile references to Zionism.

As The Algemeiner reported on Tuesday, the article, which focused on Israel’s national airline El Al, contained a section which discussed the hijacking of El Al planes by Palestinian terrorists during the 1960s, and which was introduced with the following sentence: “The conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, who have been experiencing the Jewish settlement of Palestine backed by US patronage of Zionism to this day as a violent, illegal occupation and eviction, increased significantly.”

The piece then went on to examine the hijackings carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, including the following observation: “The terror of the PFLP and many other organizations didn’t remain restricted to El Al, and has its bitter climax with the events of ’9-11′.”

WingsWorld is marketed to model airplane collectors and includes large numbers of children among its readers.
Following a complaint to Herpa by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Dr. Shimon Samuels, Director of International Relations for the Jewish advocacy organization, spoke directly with Walter Wehr, Herpa’s General Manager for Sales and Production. Samuels told The Algemeiner that Wehr had assured him that a full apology would be published on the company’s website, that the offending sentences would be removed from the online version of the article, and that the company would now start visibly listing the El Al replica models it sells from its online shop. Samuels had expressed concern that the absence of El Al from a menu listing the different airline models available from Herpa gave the impression of a boycott of Israel.

“It’s sad to see such hatred towards Israelis,” Priniv CEO Ido Yaniv said in comment.
Israeli security guards at the pavilion immediately alerted their French counterparts, and the demonstration was forcefully dispersed, after protesters refused to disperse peacefully.
“You always see the demonstrations on television, but suddenly you are in the very center of the fire,” Yaniv said of the incident.
“It’s frightening and sad at the same time to see how hatred is also reflected on issues not related to politics. It’s sad to see young people have no real knowledge, political and historical, and exhibit anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel and Israelis,” Yaniv said. [...]

Although the demonstration did not last long, it caused concern among Israeli exhibitors, especially since there were violent clashes between protesters and security guards who tried to disperse the demonstration.
“Beyond the direct attempt to scare us as Israeli marketers abroad, the protesters also directly tried to scare the traders and local business owners to not buy and do business with the Israeli distributors,”

Yaniv said.
Rampant anti-Semitism in Europe, especially after Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, caused Priniv, as well as other companies, significant economic damage.
In Priniv’s case, the kibbutz firm had almost closed negotiations on a deal with a major distributor in Sweden.
But just before the final signing, which would have netted the firm a million shekels annually, “the distributor requested that the raw material be sent to Holland, and fill the bottles there, so there would be no direct connection to Israel,” Yaniv explained.
“We, as a patriotic company, of course did not agree, and so the transaction blew up.”

Friday, October 24, 2014

Young people who voted for Golden Dawn in 2012 did so out of ideological conviction and not for reasons stemming from the economic crisis, a new study from a leading Athens university shows.

Conducted by researchers at the Panteion University, the study also found that the level of identification among Golden Dawn’s young voters with its aims was higher than for youth who backed other parties. These voters generally view Golden Dawn as a “nationalist party”, rejecting as “despicable” its description as “fascist” or “neonazi” even though they recognise that there are ideological affinities between it and fascism.

(...)

“The majority insists on the cultural and biological superiority of the Greeks and the corresponding inferiority of other ethnicities. However, this pride is accompanied by feelings of national humiliation, resentment and self-pity when faced with the decline that the country is experiencing,” said Koronaiou.

Ukip has defended its European Parliament alliance with a member of a party whose leader questions the Holocaust and makes racist slurs.

The British party admitted Polish MEP Robert Iwaszkiewicz was an "odd bedfellow" following his recruitment this week, but said it was necessary to work with him.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage said he had found "nothing in this guy's background to suggest he is a political extremist at all" and dismissed comments Mr Iwaszkiewicz reportedly made about wife-beating as "a joke".

Mr Iwaszkiewicz is a member of the Congress of the New Right, whose leader, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, is reported to have said that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust.

Korwin-Mikke has previously spoken of a "Holocaust industry" and made offensive remarks about black Americans and rape. He also called Jews "our worst enemies".

Roger Cukierman, president of France’s largest Jewish group, was indicted for calling the comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala a “professional anti-Semite.”

Cukierman, who heads the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities and organizations, announced the indictment on Monday in a video that appeared on the CRIF website.

“So I am being indicted for having stated on Europe 1 that Dieudonne is a professional anti-Semite. Isn’t that funny? For once, Dieudonne is actually comical,” Cukierman said.

Dieudonne has 10 convictions for inciting racial hatred against Jews, according to CRIF. He also invented the quenelle salute, which French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said was an inverted Nazi gesture of anti-Semitic hate, and the term “shoananas,” a mashup of the Hebrew word for the Holocaust and the French word for pineapple, which is used to suggest the genocide never happened without explicitly violating France’s laws against doing so.

Newspaper La Capitale reports that police are stepping up protection measures towards Maccabi football club. Since the killings at the Brussels Jewish Museum the club, which has 400 members, is under permanent protection.

Neil Gibb, in an article on the Huffington Post UK site, proves he knows nothing about Israel, Gaza or recent history. I'm sure there are many such people, they just don't usually flaunt their ignorance.

In Gaza recently nearly three thousand people, mainly women and children, were killed by precision shelling because of a conflict that was triggered by one young man being beaten to death as he was 'an Arab', and then a tit-for-tat killing of some other young men because they were 'Jews'.

According to Gibb, the chain of events is as follows:
1. Arab boy beaten to death (Jewish aggression)
2. Jewish boys killed (Arab 'tit-for-tat')
3. Precision shelling of nearly 3,000 people, mainly women and children

Now, let's review what really happened:
1. Jewish boys were killed (Arab aggression)
2. Israeli army targets Hamas in the West Bank
3. Arab boy beaten to death (Jewish 'tit-for-tat')
4. As a result of #2, Hamas in Gaza attacks Israel (Arab aggression)
5. Israel responds (Jewish 'tit-for-tat'). Israel employed 'precision shelling' in order to avoid killing civilians, and not, as Gibb portrays it, in order to target women and children.

And (of course) he gets his numbers wrong. He claims 3,000 Gazans were killed, most of which were women and children.

According to the UN (via Wikipedia): 2,189 Gazans died during the Gaza war. 1,486 are believed to be civilians 513 were children, 269 were women. So, about 2,000 killed, a third of which were women and children.

Thursday, October 23, 2014

I posted about this story back when Kurz complained he was getting antisemitic abuse, but I think it's interesting to look at the attacker's defense: he was upset at Israel. And that is why he wrote that "Jews should disappear" and that "Hitler didn't do enough". Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, pure and simple.

A 25-year-old man from Lower Austria has been ordered to do community service after posting hate speech on Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz’s Facebook page.

The man, an industrial engineer, said that “in principle” he regretted posting anti-Semitic comments, but said in his defence that he had been “very upset” after Israel launched air strikes on Gaza.

Kurz received dozens of anti-Semitic posts on his personal Facebook page after he posted an appeal for peace in the Middle East in July. He then submitted screenshots from his Facebook page to the state prosecutor.

Lower Austrian prosecutor Thomas Ernst read out the following post in court: "Peace will exist only when the Jews completely disappear! In 1950 they did not have a place and now they are in Palestine and murdering people there to get more space! Hitler clearly didn’t do enough!"

In his defence the man said that he only meant that “Jews should disappear from the Gaza strip”. However the judge said that his reference to Hitler would suggest that this was indeed hate speech. “It was the wrong choice of words. I wrote them out of a sense of frustration,” the accused said.

The Danish Parliament is set to once again debate the legality of male circumcision today, with the Red-Green Alliance and the Liberal Alliance teaming up to push for a ban on the practice. The other parliamentary parties are in internal disagreement on the matter.

A survey of 1,000 Danes polled in the last few days found that the Danish people overwhelmingly support a ban, with nearly three in four backing either a full or partial ban, whilst only ten percent supported the rights of parents to circumcise their sons. The debate will once again raise fears that anti-Semitism is gripping the region.

Dieudonne has 10 convictions for inciting racial hatred against Jews, according to CRIF. He also invented the quenelle, a Nazi-like gesture that many have deemed anti-Semitic, and the term “shoananas,” a mash-up of the Hebrew word for the Holocaust and the French word for pineapple that is used to suggest that the genocide never happened without explicitly violating French laws.

Earlier this year, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls — then the interior minister — advised mayors to ban Dieudonne’s shows, leading to their cancellation. The comedian’s replacement routine featured less anti-Semitic material.

Last week, Dieudonne was indicted for fraud, money laundering and abuse of public funds, Le Monde reported. It is believed that Dieudonne, who declared he had no money to pay fines he received for his hate speech, transferred more than $500,000 to Cameroon while he declared himself to be insolvent.

Swiss retailer Migros apologized on Wednesday for what it said was a string of errors which put coffee cream with the faces of Hitler and Mussolini in cafes in the Alpine country.

Migros said it "offered its excuses for this unforgivable incident" and that it was in the process of withdrawing the small pots of cream from cafes to which they had been delivered.

Labels from mini cream pots have cult following in Switzerland, with manufacturers feeding the passion of collectors by releasing regular new editions.
The plastic pots were not on sale in the Migros supermarket network, but served to customers who ordered white coffee at about a hundred restaurants and cafes among retail giant's business clients.

Migros said one of its subsidiaries, milk company ELSA, had been responsible for supplying the cream and that its internal control procedures had been "insufficient".
The designs were developed by Karo, a firm which specializes in cream pots, and were part of a 55-label series based on vintage cigar bands.
Among them were cigar bands from the pre-World War II era which showed the faces of Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler and his Italian Fascist counterpart Benito Mussolini.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Nicolas Anelka’s quenelle gesture embarrassed and damaged West Bromwich Albion, the club’s chairman has said.
Speaking for the first time about the affair, Jeremy Pearce said it had been a “huge issue in terms of our standing”.

West Brom terminated the player’s contract after he had made the gesture – a form of Nazi salute – during a Premier League match in December 2013.
The move came after the Football Association banned Anelka for five matches and fined him £80,000.
Mr Peace told the Express and Star newspaper that attempts to make the player apologise failed.
He said: “We got Nicolas in here with his advisers.

Richard Garlick (Albion’s technical director at the time) was dealing with him.
“I was in my office in the room next door. I said I want him to say ‘I am sorry to all these people’.
“They tried to draw up a statement. There was a mealy-mouthed paragraph and I said (to Garlick): ‘He hasn’t apologised, get him to apologise.’
“It was quite clear he wasn’t going to so, bang – out. Right, sever the contract, cut it. It was gross misconduct, because of the damage he’d done.
Mr Peace added that he felt “extremely strongly” that Anelka should have apologised, “because of the damage (he caused) to everyone, to the community he affected, the embarrassment he caused to the club”.

On Tuesday, that court heard lawyers for Hungarian survivors say that increasing anti-Semitism in Hungary makes it impossible for their clients to win their Holocaust restitution case there.

“A virulent strain of anti-Semitism has been spreading at an alarming rate within Hungary … and these dangerous sentiments have found increased acceptance among mainstream Hungarian politicians and parliamentarians,” lawyers for nearly 100 Hungarian survivors said in court papers filed ahead of their arguments to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago.

Jean Bricmont is a Professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain and a member of the prestigious Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium and is well-known for his obsessive interest in Jews, Zionism, Israel, the "lobby", the "zionisation of the American mind" etc. He relentlessly posts on his Facebook page and gives lectures about these pet subjects. His prestigious posts and high standing in Belgian society and academic world give the lie to all those who pretend that nobody is allowed to criticize Jews, Zionism, Israel, the lobby etc. without suffering dire consequences. Such is the power of intimidation that ... he is never criticised - well nobody dares to criticize him to be precise. On the contrary he is honoured, praised and feted.

The amount of anti-Israel/Jew/Zionist stuff he comes up with and in turn churns out is absolutely amazing. Phenomenal. A couple of days ago, Jean Bricmont spotted a very moving speech given by former French P.M. François Fillon in Israel in January 2014. Bricmont immediately jumped to the conclusion that there must be something fishy behind Mr. Fillon's sympathy for Israel and quoted excerpts of the speech adding his personal comment: 'Don't tell me that this religion [the Holocaust] is not "useful'".

Michael Portillo, a BBC journalist and former Conservative politicians, compared Hamas and Taliban terrorists to the "Zionist terrorists who formed the State of Israel", on the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Moral Maze’ (via BBC Watch). Luckily, Islamic State did 'terrible things' which sets them apart from those hateful Zionists.

“So you wouldn’t say then that the terrible things they’ve [ISIS] done – Michael Buerk listed some of them at the beginning – you wouldn’t say that that uniquely sets them apart, let’s say from Zionist terrorists…eh….who formed the State of Israel, Hamas with whom we want Israel now to speak, the Taliban with whom we have all spoken – so it doesn’t set them apart?”

“But might it also be an interesting paradox that as we come under such pressure from Islamic State that we’ll want to settle whatever we can in the region, so actually we’ll probably be pressuring Israelis to talk to the formerly demonised Hamas?” [emphasis added]

MK Yoni Chetboun (Jewish Home), Chairman of the Knesset Caucus for Israel in France, sent a letter to the mayor of Paris suburb Valenton Monday morning calling for a name change to a street named after arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti.

Barghouti, who has called for an armed uprising against Israelis on multiple occasions since his imprisonment, is currently serving five life sentences in Israeli prison for his role in planning suicide terror attacks. Despite that, he is viewed as the favorite candidate to eventually replace aging Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Chetboun, who hails from France himself, called the decision to name the street after the murderer "outrageous."

"To bestow your honors upon a murderer like Barghouti is nothing short of moral bankruptcy," Chetboun wrote to mayor Françoise Baud.
Chetboun stressed that "this is an unfortunate decision that contradicts the [values of] morality and justice which are the foundation of the French Republic."
Chetboun also warned that the move gives a "green light" to Islamism in France, at a time when over 1,000 French nationals are estimated to have already fled their native land to go fight with Islamist extremist group ISIS.

Students at a top university have unanimously rejected a request to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, claiming to do so would be “eurocentic”.

A student union motion at Goldsmiths University in south-east London, which asked “to commemorate the victims of genocide, totalitarianism and racial hatred”, was emphatically thrown out by 60 votes to just one. The only vote for the motion came for its proposer.

It asked the Student Union “to organise commemorative events for Holocaust Memorial Day (27 January), European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism (23 August), Holodomor Genocide Memorial Day (22 November) and Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (24 April).”

(...)

Goldsmiths’ education officer Sarah El-alfy led student opposition to the motion, branding it “eurocentric”‘ and “colonialist”,

A representative of Flemish Jews asked a deputy prime minister of Belgium to clarify statements in which he appeared to condone the actions of Nazi collaborators.

Jan Jambon, who is also Belgium’s interior minister, made the statements during an interview published last week in the La Libre Belgique newspaper.

During the interview Jambon, who is a member of the New Flemish Alliance party, was asked about his participation in 2001 at a rally organized by the far-right association Sint-Maartenfonds, whose mission statement is to support Flemish Belgians who fought on Nazi Germany’s side in World War II.

Commenting about these veterans, he said, “The people who collaborated with the Germans, they had their reasons. I did not live in those times.”

A group of Dutch Christians vowed to boycott Utrecht’s Domkerk Church for the duration of an exhibition on jailed Palestinian children, which they said encourages anti-Semitism.

The group made its decision known earlier this month in connection with the exhibition “Room No. 4,” which was brought to the Domkerk — one of the Netherlands’ best known churches and one of Utrecht’s tourist stops, by the Dutch Coalition for Palestinian Children in Israeli Detention.
The exhibition, which ended on Sunday, features pictures of adult models portraying Palestinian children who are suffering in Israeli detention facilities.
In one picture, the hairy hands of a hidden puppet master are gripping a marionette’s handle whose wires are connected to two people, one of whom is strung up like a crucifix. Another shows a woman emptying out her pockets to show she has no money amid 11 extended palms surrounding her. A third picture depicts seven arms hoisting up a man into a crucifer position and away from a book he is reading.

Among the people who said they would boycott the Domnkerk for the exhibition’s duration is Hebe Kohlbrugge, a writer and a member of the Domkerk Church.
“Many people cannot differentiate between Israel and Jews,” Kohlbrugge told the Trouw daily newspaper. “People wearing kippot are being harassed over Israel’s actions. Thus criticism of Israel becomes anti-Semitism.” Kohlbrugge also said the church’s history of anti-Semitism makes it an unsuitable venue for criticizing Israel.

Monday, October 20, 2014

Sir Alan Duncan, a lifelong Arabist and a former UK government minister who retains a desk in the Foreign Office as Britain’s special envoy to Oman and Yemen, has been strongly criticized for a series of stinging attacks not only on Israel, but also on the so called “Israel lobby” both in the US and Britain.

(...)

In his address to the Royal United Services Institute, having comprehensively attacked Israeli policies – an example of which was his assertion that West Bank settlements were “a wicked cocktail” of occupation and illegality and a system akin to apartheid in South Africa, he made an unprecedented verbal assault on those who supported settlements, suggesting they should be barred from public office.

(...)

But he saved his strongest criticism for those who lobby for Israel. He stated that under UK rules, “political funding should not come from another country or from citizens of another country, or be unduly in hock to another country.”

Antisemitic references were made by Golden Dawn MP Michail Arvanitis, in the Greek Parliament, during the session of Sept. 30, 2014, during which the Parliament passed in principle the draft Bill on “The organisation of the legal status of religious communities and their associations in Greece.”

MP Arvanitis referred to the propagandistic slander that the Greek Jews do not pay taxes, which he admitted to be false, only to rephrase and point out that the Greek Jews through their contributions to their Jewish communities send the Jewish money into the Jewish banks while the State spends money for them. He also put our Board’s legal status into doubt. MP Arvanitis was debated MP Adonis Georgiadis (parliamentary representative of the Governing party of Nea Dimokratia), who stressed the falsity of Arvanitis’ statements.

This isn't really news, but since Norwegian media have been busy reporting about antisemitism elsewhere in Europe, the local Jewish population wanted to remind their fellow Norwegians that it's not just 'there', but also 'here'.

According to Ervin Kohn of the Jewish community in Oslo, 'Jew' is one of the most common curse-words in Norwegian schools, along with 'gay' and 'whore'.

Matthieu Béguelin, a member of the Swiss socialist party and a comedian, made a quip about the lack of success of Jewish author Bernard-Henri Levy's play "Hotel Europe" that is currently being performed in Paris. He wrote:

"The play is a flop... Valls calls for the fight against antisemitism".

Bernard-Henri Levy is Jewish and the word "four" (oven in French) implies reference to "concentration camp ovens". Matthie Béguelin could have chosen to use other words like "bide" or "flop". He then went on to add that French prime minister Manuel Valls had issued calls for the fight against anti-Semtism.

Using word play to suggest views without stating them overtly and joking about Jews and the Holocaust are commonplace in Europe.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Statement in lawsuit brought by Green Party founder against far-right journalist triggers outrage.

A regional judge in Munich is embroiled in a highly charged dispute over her statement in a civil case that German anti-Semitism was limited to the Nazi period of 1933-1945, suggesting that post-Holocaust anti-Semitism is not a factor in Jew-hatred.

The Munich regional judge, Petra Grönke-Müller, sparked outrage on October 8 with her courtroom assertion during a civil case that “a fiery anti-Semite is someone in Germany who talks, with conviction, in an anti-Semitic way and, with conviction, does not condemn the Third Reich and cannot view the period 1933-1945 as separate from the background of history.”
The case, which goes to the heart of a modern understanding of anti-Semitism in Germany, pits a co-founder of the German Green Party, Jutta Ditfurth, against an extreme nationalistic journalist, Jürgen Elsässer. [...]

She said Elsässer worked with Ken Jebsen, a former radio host who wrote: “I know who invented the Holocaust as PR.”
Jebsen’s station, RBB, fired him over the criticism leveled against him for denying the Holocaust.

According to Esther Voet, director of the Dutch Israel defense organization CIDI, in the summer of 2014 the number of anti-Semitic incidents reported was equal to the year number of incidents in the year 2011-2012.

She estimates that 2/3 of these are caused by non-Western immigrants or their descendants. [Comment: this is a euphemistic way for saying people originating in Muslim countries. They represent about 7% of the population].

Voet says that social media has played an essential role in the incitement against Israel. She was herself the victim of incitement and can no longer keep track of all the insults on Facebook and Twitter against her.

Palestinian students have pelted the French prime minister with stones because of his condemnation of Hezbollah attacks against Israeli targets in southern Lebanon.
Mr Jospin's getaway car Security officials struggled to protect Mr Jospin
Lionel Jospin was hurriedly whisked away in an official car from the Bir Zeit University, in the West Bank town of Ramallah, where he had delivered a speech to the students.
As he entered the auditorium, some students chanted: "Go away, you are a traitor." [...]

Even inside the armour-plated car Mr Jospin was not spared the anger of the students.
They kicked the back and sides of the car, and one student was seen trying to force open the door nearest to the French prime minister, as others rained more stones on the vehicle.
Some of the students jumped on top of the car.
Palestinian security officials and Mr Jospin's bodyguards shouted and tried frantically to protect Mr Jospin. The prime minister was reported to be lightly injured but not hurt.

Diaspora Jews are scrambling to buy safe-haven homes in Israel, according to property experts.

"People say: you never know," said property consultant Rebecca Wolman, who works with the British market and has experienced a massive increase in interest since the summer. The size of the spike in enquiries is "impossible to count because it is so huge".

Ms Wolman, who works for the Tel Aviv-based advisory company Home to Home, said that she has become used to encountering families who want a second home to bolster their connection to Israel and their children's Jewish identity.

Before, "antisemitism was never in the vocabulary", but now "there is a pattern in what people are saying: 'we don't feel safe in England any more'."

She stressed that they do not emit "panic" as French Jews do, but are keen to acquire a holiday property which could, in the future, become their first home.

Both the religious and non-religious approach her, and there are people who are "most definitely secular and who didn't have much of a connection to Israel before".

Anat Riesenberg, who heads the Netanya branch of the Anglo-Saxon brokerage, reports a spike in interest from diaspora Jewish centres, including the UK. She estimated that interest is a third higher than this time last year. "It's patriotism and the increased antisemitism," she said.
She said that there was a similar rise in sales after the last Gaza war in 2012.

Bernard Kouchner, the previous foreign minister of France, said that former president Nicolas Sarkozy was widely disliked because of his Jewish origins.
Kouchner made the assertion during an interview Tuesday for RMC radio in responding to the interviewer’s question about Kouchner’s observations about Sarkozy in Kouchner’s newly published book, “Crossed Memories.”

In the book, which was published last month, Kouchner wrote: “Nicolas Sarkozy wasn’t cherished; he was detested also because he was the son of a Hungarian and the grandson of a Jew.”

Anti-Semitic books displayed at Frankfurt fair, watchdog says Qatari, Palestinian, Egyptian and Iranian publishers said to be the top offenders at world’s largest publishing gathering.

For the 12th year, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre is the only non-governmental organization to monitor anti-Semitic hate and incitement to violence on the display stands of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

At the opening press conference, Fair Director, Juergen Boos, acknowledged the growth of “hate, xenophobia and alienation,” calling for “an inspirational Fair based on respect for cultural mobility.” However, his response to an Iranian journalist seemed discordant: “We are present in Tehran [Book Fair] and really wish to showcase Iranian publishing here in Frankfurt.”

“Discordant”, in that for the last five years the Wiesenthal Centre Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, has reported to the Director on Iranian children’s literature displayed on governmental stands extolling war, terrorism, suicide and martyrdom, again repeated this year.

[W]e are ignoring the bigger problem. The crux of bringing the Israeli hawks to heel isn't so much about corporate investments – it's about political money, dripping from the campaign coffers of Western politicians bribed and briefed by Jerusalem cronies.

The funding is mysterious, ambiguous and seemingly unimpeachable, protected by anti-Semitism laws which forbid honest discussion of it, or by hasbara attack dogs who discredit any journalist or academic who speaks out.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Tori Reed, a musician from New Zealand, was told by the organizers of the WOW festival in the UK, that they are not interested in her act since she appeared in Israel. They are not 'anti-semitic', but they are boycotting any act "who have played there or who are from there".

Last night in London, British lawmakers passed a non-binding resolution recommending that the “Government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel as a contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution.”

(...)

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said the following, a comment unreported by the Guardian despite their otherwise extensive coverage of the UK Parliament’s debate over Palestine:

“Does my hon. Friend agree that, given that the political system of the world’s superpower and our great ally the United States is very susceptible to well-funded powerful lobbying groups and the power of the Jewish lobby in America, it falls to this country and to this House to be the good but critical friend that Israel needs, and this motion tonight just might lift that logjam on this very troubled area?”

One communal representative, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he believed that both sides in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict were making use of Ukrainian Jewry to disparage their opponents.
“There is no question that from the beginning we became a tool,” the representative said. “Both sides are trying to say [they] are the protectors [of Jews].”

He added that Ukrainian authorities have expressed a commitment to combating anti-Semitism both for its own sake and because “they realize that any anti-Semitic attack could reflect badly on them.”
It is possible, he continued, that the low-key response among Jewish groups to the attempted firebombing of a Kiev synagogue in the hours before Rosh Hashana was due to the government security services requesting that they not make a fuss.
“They know they will play into the hands of the other side [if they make a fuss],” he said. [...]

Chabad Rabbi Moshe Azman of Kiev was more outspoken, however, terming the reports Russian propaganda.
“We are against any use of anything Jewish and anti-Semitism for political purposes. Unfortunately, as in the past, today it continues to happen in several European countries and sometimes again lead to violence against Jews,” agreed Alex Selsky of the World Forum of Russian Speaking Jews.
A spokesman for the government’s Ukrainian Crisis Media Center called the reports “totally untrue information once again made up by Russian propagandists.”
The Russian Embassy in Tel Aviv was unable to provide a response by the time this newspaper went to print.
According to Victor Vertsner, a Russian-Israeli who was recently invited to speak at the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center and who raises money in Israel for the Ukrainian army, both sides have used the Jews in their propaganda, but more such material comes from Moscow than from Kiev. Representatives of Russian Jewry did not respond to requests for comment.

In a sermon delivered in Funen (Fyn), Denmark, Sheik Muhammad Khaled Samha asked: "How can we... accept the division of Palestine between [the Palestinians] and a gang of Jews, the offspring of apes and pigs?" The sermon was posted on the Internet on September 19, 2014.
Source: MEMRI

Monday, October 13, 2014

On the second night of Rosh Hashanah, a group of five or six men disrupted a Jewish concert in the Great Hall of Moscow’s International Music House with a tear gas attack. A half-hour into the program, the men, who were seated in the first row, began shouting menacing insults at rock star Andrey Makarevich, the featured performer of the evening, and hurled canisters of pepper gas into the hall, forcing the audience of 400 to evacuate the building teary-eyed and coughing.

(...)

Television and the mainstream Russian press coverage have made no mention of the Jewish nature of the occasion (Rosh Hashanah), the concert program (“Yiddish Jazz”) or the makeup of the audience. In the media’s reading, the incident had nothing to do with anti-Semitism; it was all about Makarevich’s politics.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

In a lecture posted on the Internet on September 28, British Muslim scholar Refi Shafi, known as "Abu Rumaysah," said that the Jews were corrupters by nature. He cited "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," saying: "Other people were aware of this evil doctrine and they did things to stop it. Like Adolf Hitler." Abu Rumaysah expressed his support of the Caliphate, saying that the people of Syria and Iraq had been blessed.

‘Dancing in Jaffa’ director Hilla Medalia [photo] says she feared for her safety amid anti-Israel protest, police told her they couldn’t do anything

Award-winning Israeli filmmaker Hilla Medalia is used to her films provoking heated discussion and debate, but she had never before experienced what happened at a screening of her film “Dancing in Jaffa,” at an Israeli film festival in Carpentras, France on October 6.
Just as Medalia and Israeli Consul General in Marseille Barnea Hassid finished making introductory remarks, some twenty audience members stood up and began shouting anti-Israel slogans. Then they threw stink bombs.

In a match between Maccabi Brussels and FC Anderlecht-Milan, one of the Jewish teens suffered antisemitic abuse from the opposing team members. Taunts such as "what's with all these dirty Jews" and "dirty Jew, I'll wait for you outside".

A group representing European Jewish communities has appealed on Romanian President Traian Basescu to look into the case of an Israeli Jewish citizen who reportedly has been the victim of an aggressive anti-Semitic smear campaign in Romania.

46-year-old Elan Schwarzenberg, an Israel-Romanian businessman active in real estate, advertising, media and commerce, is currently the subject of an ongoing investigation conducted by the National Anticorrution Directorate (DNA).

CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish organizations said the Jewish community of France was “shocked’’ by the vote of the city of Lille to “temporary freeze” a twinning with the Israeli city of Safed. [...]

Roger Cukierman, president of CRIF, wrote a letter to Aubry in which he described the city’s move as “shocking’’ to the Jewish community of France. “This decision is tatamount to a heinous attitude towards the Israeli people because neither the twin city nor the Israeli people are responsible for the Israeli government’s policy’’, he wrote.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Boaventura de Sousa Santos, professor of sociology at the University of Coimbra and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he teaches a seminar at the Law School on Globalization, Law and Democracy during the Fall semester, urges in a Brazilian site:

"ordinary citizens around the world to rise up and file a class action with all universal jurisdictions against the State of Israel with the aim of declaring its extinction as a Jewish State, not only because throughout its existence it has repeatedly committed crimes against humanity, but foremost because its own creation, as a Jewish State, constitutes a crime against humanity".

He opines that because the very existence of Israel is a crime against humanity and as such does not have statutes of limitations. The extermination of Israel would restore general dignity for Jews and Palestinians and the world in general whose dignity "was stolen through one of the most violent acts of European colonialism in the twentieth century, supported by American imperialism and poor European awareness
since the end of World War II".

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Jewish leaders have accused an Anglican Vicar from Surrey of supporting an “anti-Semitic hate-fest” by speaking at a conference in Iran at which claims of “Zionist” involvement in 9/11 were aired.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews is demanding an investigation by the Church of England into why Rev Dr Stephen Sizer, of Virginia Water, Surrey, attended the event in Tehran at which a video of the anti-Jewish French comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala was also shown.

But Dr Sizer, who is a prominent campaigner against Israeli policy in Palestine, insisted that even though he strongly disagreed with many of the things others said, he was there as an “ambassador for reconciliation”.He repudiated claims that the Second “New Horizon” festival in Tehran in September was anti-Semitic, although strong anti-Zionist views were expressed, and said he was there to present a Christian point of view.

The conference programme includes details of discussion on themes such as “Zionist Fingerprints on the 9/11 Cover-up” and other conspiracy theories about Israel.

A UKIP MEP apologised last night for retweeting a link to a virulently anti-Semitic blog after her party had initially mounted an extraordinary defence of the politician.

Jane Collins, who was elected this year to represent Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, posted a link to a page of an extremist blog attacking Labour’s deputy leader Harriett Harman over allegations an organisation she once worked for had links to paedophile rights campaigners. The opening sentence referred to the politician as a “Jewess” – which she is not.